


The Heirs of Bolvangar

by Poetry



Category: His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Genre: Bechdel Test Pass, Epistolary, Female Friendship, For Science!, Gen, POV Outsider, Post-Canon, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-16
Updated: 2014-04-16
Packaged: 2018-01-19 14:22:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1473007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Poetry/pseuds/Poetry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Letters from one Margaret Cavendish to her friend Elisa, concerning her expedition to the North as research assistant to the renowned Scholar Lyra Belacqua.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Heirs of Bolvangar

**Author's Note:**

  * For [daymarket](https://archiveofourown.org/users/daymarket/gifts).



> I was intrigued by my giftee's idea of writing a fic from the perspective of Lyra's intern, so I ran with it. Thanks to [maedron](http://archiveofourown.org/users/maedron) for the beta.

Jordan College

Oxford, England

 

Elisa May

58 Chandler St

Norwich, England

 

Dearest Elisa,

 

I am delighted and not a little overcome to inform you that I have got the job with Scholar Belacqua.

 

Eliander and I must have practiced the interview half a hundred times. But when I checked in with Eliander right before we stepped into the Scholar’s office, I found that he was quite undone by nerves and shaking like a leaf. It startled me, because up until then I had felt only that blankness that comes over me all too often – you know what I mean – and it reminded me that yes, I was nervous, and that it was perfectly natural under the circumstances, as I am not likely to find any other employment suited to my abilities.

 

It is easy to forget how very young Scholar Belacqua is. She is our age, but even when we met her all those years ago in the North, she had an ageless quality. It was as if she channeled the wrath of the angels themselves upon those who nearly destroyed us all. But I see none of that agelessness in her now, simply a young woman who has achieved remarkable success in her early years.

 

She was dressed in boyish clothing (which I now know to be her custom) with Pantalaimon curled about her neck. She invited me to sit and admire the photograms of Dust framed on her walls. I remarked on the patterns of Dust in the photograms and the elegance of the equations that describe them.

 

I cannot forget what she said then: “I love the calculus too. It describes the world, yet it transcends the world. Even if the universe were light and the stars were pinpricks of darkness, the theorems would still be true.”

 

I nodded, at first, as if she had said something perfectly ordinary, until I saw that Eliander had crawled forward to the very tips of my fingers to stare at Pantalaimon and say, “That is why your work is so important. It allows people to observe mathematics and experimental theology with their own eyes, and to see that it is beautiful.”

 

For a moment, I worried. Would it perturb her, that Eliander had spoken so passionately while I nodded and smiled blandly? But of course, she knows why, and I am now confident that it does not bother her in the slightest. Pantalaimon bowed his head to Eliander, and after some little more discussion of logistics (which the Scholar clearly found tedious) she offered me the position as research assistant. I have spent the last few days getting my affairs in order and frantically reading all the newest advances in the aerofluidynamics of Dust. Scholar Belacqua has also put me in charge of inspecting all the photography equipment before it is packed away for the journey. She has a scorn for practical details I find more amusing than exasperating so far, though after a few months of the voyage I may come to change my mind.

 

I shall be sure to visit you at your new address before I embark. By the by, you are right to think your rent is absolutely outrageous! It is not at all fair that you should have to pay extra for a yard just so Korefors has enough room to sneeze in. It is discrimination against large dæmons – if we had the dosh I’m sure we could make a lawsuit of it. If you need any help affording it, I am flush thanks to my new employment, and I should be happy to prop up your finances until you can find a proper job of your own.

 

Most fondly yours,

 

Margaret

 

* * *

 

 

Trollesund Witch Consulate

Trollesund, Lapland

 

Elisa May

58 Chandler St

Norwich, England

 

Dearest Elisa,

 

This expedition to the North with Lyra is everything I could have dreamed.

 

Yes, I call her Lyra. I felt very strange calling her Scholar Belacqua during the interview – not because I can’t adjust to the idea of a woman Scholar, mind you, but only because it is odd to be so formal with someone who has saved your life. Lyra never stands on ceremony, anyway, so she does not object. When I introduce you to her you must call her Lyra as well. She remembers you, you know. It is as hard for her to forget as it is for us.

 

I have been checking in with Eliander often, as you have taught me to do. It has been a helpful practice for keeping an even keel on my emotions as I find myself in places and situations completely foreign to my experience. It has also been critical for making important decisions, which has become a responsibility greater than any I have had to bear in the past. When a piece of valuable equipment breaks, I must decide whether or how to replace it. I mix up fresh batches of the Asriel emulsion. I assign duties to the crew for maintaining and assembling equipment. Lyra always expects everything to be in place when she is ready to take measurements. She has that queenly air, like she expects everything to occur exactly to her specifications, which continues to charm me rather than irritate me. I am certain this attitude has helped her advance as far in academia as she has.

 

My fears about the crew were not baseless. They noticed my frequent check-ins with Eliander almost immediately, and when I ignored their curious looks, they accepted them at first as an extreme personal quirk. After all, goodness knows, Lyra has at least as many. (Did you know she’s friendly with the gyptians? She has three of them on her crew and loves them most of all.) I never minded. After all, bemused tolerance is much kinder than disgust or pity. I know you can’t abide disgust, but pity stings me more, because it’s just contempt in disguise. It’s not like they can ever truly sympathize. It’s not as if they know what it’s like, having to check in with your dæmon all the time just to know your own mind.

 

Lyra understands, though. Really. If you’re wondering at my current address, Lyra is a dear friend to two witch queens. I saw with my own eyes: she embraced them like old friends. It’s true what they say about witches. One of the queens, Ruta Skadi, had no dæmon in sight. They are not like us; rather, they have learned the trick of separating from their dæmons in body while remaining united in mind and soul. Somehow, they have taught Lyra this trick, too. I saw Pantalaimon do it: Lyra cannot fly through the sky on sprays of cloud-pine as witches do, but Pantalaimon held tight to the back of the queen Serafina Pekkala’s pine-broom and rode it right into the sky, while Lyra stood on the ground far below, smiling up at the sight. She is a more peculiar woman than we ever guessed. I feel more of a kinship to her than before, I must admit, now I know she understands, in some part, what it is to be separate within one’s own soul.

 

The witch queens were of great assistance in our research. I could not help but wonder that they had nothing better to do than aid our endeavour, as queens and all, but I think being a witch queen is not at all like being a queen of men. When they are not at war, their only duties are to call meetings of the clan and attend convocations with other clans as representative. Otherwise, their time is their own, and Pekkala and Skadi spent their time predicting the weather and finding us particularly clear vantage points from which to take our photograms. I have tried to acquit myself well with them, but I am afraid I can do little more than stammer at them, because they are so beautiful and so strange.

 

Oh, the photograms are spectacular, Elisa. The currents of Dust are so much grander and more chaotic here than in England. Lyra has already photographed the epicenter of the anomalies extensively, but she let me take a few more so I could see it for myself. On the developed film, it is like a hurricane trapped in amber. But it is not frozen, for it rages all around us, unseen. Sometimes I look at the photograms, and try to imagine the Dust raging all around me, and I see Eliander’s wings quiver as if in a wind.

 

You must promise not to tell anyone, because the data have not yet been verified, but our photograms of Svalbard show just as much Dust as any photogram of a human city. Hopefully this work will put paid to those blinkered fools in Parliament who say the panserbjørne are just beasts that have been taught speech like pet cockatiels. I can tell you from my own experience that they are not, though I would not have dreamed of doubting Lyra on that score. She brought me along to show the negatives to King Iorek Byrnison himself! He discussed experimental theology nearly as well as a student at Oxford, though he had a rather different perspective from any I have heard. He proposed to Lyra that we take photograms of the bears’ armour, which he believes will be particularly dense in Dust. Lyra is not sure we will have enough film, but if there is some left over, we will return to Svalbard to do just that.

 

Our next destination is the one I have dreaded. Tomorrow we depart for Bolvangar. Yesterday, Lyra explained to the crew why she planned this stop. Most of them did not know exactly what the General Oblation Board did there, only that there had been monstrous atrocities. Between you and me, she has no real idea what effect the intercisions might have had on the Dust there, but she is determined to find out.

 

When she told the crew about Bolvangar, the penny dropped for most of them about Eliander and me. I can feel their pity on me, all the time, like slime that I can’t wash off. Their dæmons approach Eliander more than they ever had before. Curiosity, I suppose, about how he will react. Are they disappointed when he waves his antennae at them, just as any other insect dæmon would? Do they notice the way I don’t react to them until I can turn around and see them for myself?

 

I know, Elisa. If you were here, you would tell me it is no use to wonder, and wipe away my tears. Fortunately, I had Lyra here to buck me up. I am not some charity case, you know. She kept in touch with all the children from Bolvangar, severed and whole. She told me that some of her crew are former military, who have friends with shell shock and combat fatigue and all manner of unthinkable trauma, and they manage to carry on, so they really ought to know better. I told her, truthfully, that I had never thought about it that way. Everyone tries to set apart what happened to us, as if it’s entirely different from any other terrible ordeal a person can undergo. But in the end, it was just another way in which the powerful are cruel to the weak. I think Lyra has seen more of that cruelty than she lets on.

 

I cannot end on such a grim note, so in response to your missive, which did arrive intact at the embassy in Helsinki: my warmest congratulations on your new employment. You may be the first five-foot woman ever to be employed as a stevedore in Norwich, or even the whole of England, but once Korefors starts hauling freight I am sure no one will dare mock you for it. I daresay you have turned your intercision to its best advantage. Surely other people with elephant dæmons envy you your freedom to separate as you will, and surely your employers have taken note of the possibilities. Once the two of us have a tidy bit of money put by, we ought to start lending to the other intercision survivors. I think they can succeed as well as we have if they are given the chance.

 

I do not know when my next letter will come. After Bolvangar, we are off to a grand convocation of witch clans to take photograms of their spells. Yes, they really can do spells, and soon we shall have the evidence! Whenever it comes, you ought to know that Eliander writes letters to you all the time, whether we have ink and paper or not, so when we are watching the witches at their spells I know he will whisper: “Dearest Elisa, I have the most remarkable story to tell you…”

 

With greatest fondness,

 

Margaret


End file.
